


Put That Puzzle Piece Back

by sweetNsimple



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe Steve Rogers, Alternate Universe Tony Stark - Freeform, Angst, Avengers Family, Character Death Fix, Depression, Dimension Travel, Dubious Consent, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Plato's Theory, Polygamy, Smut, They bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-19
Updated: 2014-01-19
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has learned to exist outside of the memories.  To talk and walk, to play the part, the leader, the martyr, the friend, the lover.  It doesn't all come as naturally as it once had (Smile, Steve.  Laugh, Steve.  Orgasm, Steve.  Order, Steve.  Don't cry, Steve.  Don't break, Steve.), but he's learned to fake it to a professional level.  He's Steve Rogers, Captain America.  This won't kill him.</p><p>(It's worse than being dead, sometimes.)</p><p>Yes, Steve has learned to exist outside the memories, has relearned “I'm fine, no, really, I'm okay, don't worry about me” and redefined it as an art.  </p><p>But he lives in the memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put That Puzzle Piece Back

Steve has learned to exist outside of the memories. To talk and walk, to play the part, the leader, the martyr, the friend, the lover. It doesn't all come as naturally as it once had (Smile, Steve. Laugh, Steve. Orgasm, Steve. Order, Steve. Don't cry, Steve. Don't break, Steve.), but he's learned to fake it to a professional level. He's Steve Rogers, Captain America. This won't kill him.

(It's worse than being dead, sometimes.)

Yes, Steve has learned to exist outside the memories, has relearned “I'm fine, no, really, I'm okay, don't worry about me” and redefined it as an art. 

But he lives in the memories.

(Everything comes naturally there.)

He watches, for every hour he can, every minute he can spare, their old lives. The good times. The great times, the times that were too good to be true – obviously, because they didn't last. He sees himself, he sees his self-made family, his hard-won team, his closest confidantes and partners, interact and mesh and ripple into a puzzle all put together with its torn pieces and damaged parts, and it's beautiful, so beautiful, so amazing. 

(He wants that back so much more than he wants to move on and learn to be happy again.)

He sees them all in their bed, the bed they have in Tony's room, large enough to fit five of the most incredible people he has known since his own time and himself. He sees them caress and laugh and make love. He sees Tony over his past self, languid thrusts and lazy kisses, and past Natasha stretches to their side and takes Steve's manhood in a delicate, deadly hand. Bruce is coming apart beneath the ferocity of Thor's passion, eyes wide and glazed and breath stuttered, hands clenching in midair. Clint's on the edge of the bed, smiling, watching, jerking himself off for another moment before gagging Bruce with his cock.

It used to be like this. Almost every night they weren't too tired, this had been their bedtime lullaby, their nightly routine. Use their separate bathrooms in pairs, Steve and Tony, Thor and Bruce, Clint and Natasha, then converge together, to this one place, and worship the bodies that came together.

He watches them tire each other out, Steve and Thor finishing together because they are the most voracious, the ones with the highest, inhuman sex drives (Tony doesn't stop touching Steve, though, running his hand over his chest, his abdomen, his sides, kissing him, that small smirk never leaving, whispering filthy things into his ear that JARVIS didn't catch on audio but that Steve still remembers, still shivers from), before they all curl and tangle into a mass of limbs and heartbeats and quiet snores. 

Steve is spooning Tony. Holds him so tightly while he sleeps, as if he thinks (as if he knows) that something or someone is going to try and rip him away.

(Something does, and Steve wasn't holding on tight enough.)

He sees the other videos, every second of surveillance JARVIS has. The good times, the bad times, the worse times, the intimate times. He sees them all argue, sees Tony's fears, sees Natasha's darkness, Clint's self-hatred, Thor's rage, Bruce's fragility – the sides that they weren't meant to show anyone, yet they showed one another. He even sees his own fear, his own possessiveness, how he steps between guests in the Avengers Tower and the Avengers. How he wraps his arms around his lovers and steers them neatly away from foreign hands, even for the most ordinary thing like a greeting. 

He's jealous of everything that threatens his family, and Tony is the one who gives him that Devil-Should-Fear-Me grin before he carts him off to a private room, takes his jealousy inside with them just so he can beat it down, melt it, reform it, make it into acceptance with those hands and that body and that voice and those Come-Hither eyes.

(Steve tries to figure out what he misses most. There's no definite answer because he misses -him- and not just his parts.)

Sometimes, the others join him in reliving the past. Natasha and Clint don't say a word, don't make a look, don't even blink. They're there and their times away, just like him, but so much more quietly than him, because they are trained to – by life, by others, by profession – not let anyone know how much pain they're in.

Bruce watches, and looks away, and looks back, and he shudders, and he gasps, and his hands shake. He never stays long, can't, but he stays long enough to slip into Steve's lap and take comfort from him, give comfort to him, before he leaves. Thor laughs at the good memories, laughs at the bad ones too. He claps Steve on the back when it feels right, gives him his godly look of disappointment when he feels that's right too, and he could probably stay down in Tony's shop as long as Steve can, but he doesn't. 

The rest of them try to move on. To reform and reshape their lives and themselves to make up for that missing puzzle piece, that hole in their lives.

Steve doesn't. Steve can't. He tries to, because he's done it for so many others before him, tries to fight it, tries to outlive it.

(It's like trying to pretend that someone isn't cutting his limbs off, one by one, like trying to walk with no legs, trying to hold with arms, trying to see and smell and taste with no head, trying to breathe with no chest. He wants it, but he can't have it, because it's not possible, and the prosthetics his partners make for him only make him whole for a short while before they crumble away.)

He's gone through this too much. He gave Tony too much. He could handle Bucky leaving – didn't like it, didn't have to – while Tony couldn't even walk out the front door without Steve appearing at his side, asking every question from where Tony is going to when he will get there to when he will be back and, never mind, I'll just go with you, it will be better that way.

He has let himself become a part of his lovers, each of them, has lived Plato's Theory with six parts of the same soul. They are so powerful together, so unstoppable, so complete –

Not anymore.

(Not ever again.)

Steve has learned to exist outside of the memories. 

(He only lives inside of them.)

~::~

They tumble through a tear between their dimensions, created by a hoard of nanobots chewing steadily at dimensional energy, like termites in a house of wood. 

It's him. That is, it's Steve, but a different one. One that looks around with cold, cold eyes, and displeasure, and demands that they find a way to send them back. They can't fit through the same tear, and there's no telling how long it will take before they can find another one that they can use.

Steve, this universe's Steve, himself, doesn't even care. Because the man who follows after Steve is brunette, with molten brown eyes, and that crazy goatee that he both loves and hates. Steve actually feels the collective gasp of pure WANT and NEED that goes through his partners when the other Tony, the new Tony, looks around.

Steve actually does try to tell himself that this Tony is different. He doesn't have their Tony's memories, their Tony's habits, the same bruises and scars, the same love.

(It doesn't work.)

This Tony is angry. So angry, at them, at the world, at his own life, beaten into a corner where he snarls and licks his wounds and curls around his weaknesses till he's all defense. It doesn't take long to figure out why.

The other Steve (“You be Rogers,” Clint had said, then pointed at him, “You be Steve. This shit's just too confusing otherwise.”), Rogers, wasn't nice at all. He grabs Tony, puts bruises on him, he snarls at Tony, he puts him down, he keeps him there. This Steve doesn't love Tony, doesn't even care for him, and he's appalled when they tell him that their Tony was part of the Avengers, and sickened when they treat Tony kindly (as kindly as two master assassins can). 

“In our universe,” Rogers says, “we don't make that mistake.” He glares pointedly at Tony, till the almost smile he's wearing as he talks science with Bruce (just like they used to, just like they loved to do, just like Bruce needs and has tried so hard to pretend that he doesn't) slips away and he glares at all of them, retreating into himself. 

“Tony was a very important part of our team,” Natasha says. “He funded the Avengers, created and updated everything from our gadgets to our uniforms, and,” she meets Tony's dark, hateful eyes, “fought with us. He saved our lives more times than I can count.”

Steve watches Rogers closely, tries to find some shred of respect or awe for the feats of Tony Stark. 

All that comes is a deprecating frown. “And where is your Stark now?”

Steve doesn't even think about it. It just happens. He takes three steps into Rogers' personal bubble, draws his fist back, and then lands it in that face that looks just like his (and, at the same time, nothing like his at all).

Rogers fights back, knows as much as Steve and some things that Steve doesn't know.

That's alright, though. 

(Captain America has fought with Iron Man. This monster can't beat him.)

And he doesn't.

SHIELD in Rogers' world had had the suits destroyed after the Chitauri attack, hadn't wanted Tony to have that sort of power anymore, not after they had seen what he was capable of when he had flown the missile through the wormhole and come back in one piece. Apparently, in that dimension, Tony hadn't died for those precious few seconds. He'd gone to the very mouth of the wormhole and let go of the missile, and then he had come back down at his own speed.

In that dimension, no one would have gone out of their way to catch him. 

(They don't love him there like he was loved here.)

(They don't deserve him.)

~::~

Steve isn't even consciously aware of the plans he makes till he lures Tony down into his – their Tony's – old labs. He shows Tony what he had been working on, and sits in awe as this Tony picks up right where their Tony left off. It takes a few hours, but Tony begins to relax, to dissociate Steve from Rogers, and it's like their Tony never even left.

(Steve should be ashamed of himself, should hate himself for thinking for even a moment that this Tony can become their Tony, for wanting to keep him so badly, for needing him. He doesn't, though. Sees this as a chance, as a way to save this Tony and themselves. Sees this as a way to complete the puzzle again. He's in love already, all over again, because this Tony is their Tony, just from a different place with different people who don't understand the treasure they have.)

Steve listens to Tony talk a hundred miles a minute, watches his hands fly over the holograms, basks in his brilliance and snark, and knows that he isn't going to let this Tony go back.

This Tony belongs to him – to them – now. 

(He'll hold on tighter this time. Tony won't slip away.)

“You know, no one's really told me how I died,” Tony states one day, two weeks after he and Rogers had arrived. He's comfortable with them now. Confused and intrigued by them, but comfortable. They've been waiting for him to reach out and touch them, invade their personal space like he used to, idle up and double-dog-dare them with that grin of his to spar, to argue, to clash. 

(He doesn't. It's the one thing different between this Tony and their Tony. This one has been hurt every time he tried to reach out to the Avengers, thrown and tossed and hit and kicked. He's learned. They're trying to make him unlearn it.) 

He says it so flippantly, touching and changing and forming ideas beneath his fingertips. He and Bruce move around and with each other like a dance they have performed thousands of times (they have, here, in this dimension, but they were like this even that first awkward time on the helicarrier, when Tony poked and prodded and dared Bruce to question the Hulk, and Steve dared to think less of Tony than he ever should have), and Tony can't seem to get enough of it. He smirks and slides and almost laughs as he and Bruce never even invade each others' genius as much as mesh into each others' ideas.

Almost, but not quite. They will get there someday, though.

Bruce stops. So does Steve.

The silence stretches. Steve can't breathe. Steve can't hear. He replays that day in his mind, Tony yelling May Day, Tony screaming, Tony dying.

He's hiding in Bruce's chest before he even realizes that he's wheezing, that an anxiety attack has settled right in his chest, and his heartbeat is so loud, and his lungs burn, and there's something stuck in his throat that makes it so hard to take air in, and there are spots before his eyes.

“Whoa, hey, hey, it's okay, big guy. Don't break on me. Please? Pretty please?” Tony's hands are on him. -Tony's- hands are on -him-. Petting his head, rubbing his shoulders, fluttering from place to place, awkward and unsure, and Steve arches his hips against Bruce's thigh and lets him feel his erection.

This is not the time or place. It really isn't.

(He hasn't felt Tony's hands on him in almost a year.)

Bruce doesn't say anything, just moves his thigh to keep friction between them, and casually wraps his arm around Steve's shoulders. “It's alright, Tony. It's just – it's not easy to talk about.” He clears his throat. “A scientist named Roker Strang had mutated a strand of rabies and then tested it on a village in South Africa. It was... bad. Really bad. We were called in to make sure the virus didn't spread. In the fight, you were taken down and –” Bruce pauses. Quietly, “You died a hero.”

He doesn't mention the screams, the screech of bending metal, the snap of broken bones, the wet slide of internal organs, the hiss and snarl and roar of those demented, pain-ridden bodies as they tore the man they loved to bits. They had all been spread throughout the village, along the borders and infiltrating inward, keeping the virus contained. Only Clint and Natasha had been paired up, one as a hand-to-hand combat fighter and the other long-distance. The Hulk and Thor don't have a comm, never even heard Tony suffer and die slowly. 

They found the reason why Tony had let himself get close enough for them to grab onto and drag down. One little girl, killed and shredded in Tony's arms.

He -had- died a hero. But his sacrifice had gone unrewarded. 

(Steve is selfish enough to wish that he hadn't sacrificed himself at all.)

“A hero...” Tony's voice is soft. Then he snorts. “Yeah. Because I could measure up to you guys, right?”

He does that. Brings himself down, because he's just so used to it. 

Steve grabs Tony's hand without thinking about it, presses his cheek against his knuckles, and takes that warmth. “Sometimes, Tony, it's all we could do to keep up with you.”

He feels Tony's pulse jump, looks up and Tony's eyes are blown. “Wow, wish I had been him. Even if he did die and all. Sounds like he had a really good life.”

Steve is a good guy. Mostly. Usually. 

(It's not good, what he does next.)

He lays Tony down on the long, metal table, and Tony goes without a fight. Just confusion, looking up at Steve with those dark, intelligent eyes. Steve half-waits for Bruce to stop him, half-waits for Bruce to leave, because this is bad. This is a bad thing to do to Tony, who is so angry and vulnerable at turns, who doesn't seem to know what Steve is doing and doesn't care to find out. He just shivers and gives into Steve's touches with a starved edge to his groans. 

He doesn't think Bruce will support this, taking advantage of this Tony who has gone unloved and abused for so long. 

(He's wrong.)

Bruce is right there with them, kissing Tony, stroking his hair, talking to him, keeping him calm as Steve takes off their clothes and sucks Tony into his mouth. Bruce hands him the lube he keeps in his back pocket (always prepared, always ready, eyes are filled with awe and need). Then Bruce is stroking himself, getting up on the table, right on Tony's chest, holding himself above the arc reactor (it's glowing, Tony's alive, he's here), and he doesn't let Tony touch him, just lets him watch.

It's beautiful, his two geniuses like this together, again.

(Complete.)

Tony tries so hard to be an active participant, tries to reach past Bruce to touch Steve, tries to slip past Bruce's restraining hold to touch him, tries to touch himself. (They won't let him. He's theirs for now, he doesn't get to. He's all theirs, not even his own anymore.)  
'  
He splits Tony open with learned ease. Tony is so -tight-, so warm, so nice. Bruce throws his head back and cums all over Tony's face and Tony -loves- it, laps it up, using his hands to bring it to his tongue and licks himself clean. He begs, so prettily, so demanding, for more.

So they give it, and Steve slips into Tony's heat, and it's like coming home. Tony keens and growls and curses, and he says all the filthy things he used to, reaches out to touch and hold, and Bruce finally forces his hands down to the table. 

But there's no gagging Tony. And Tony takes full advantage of it.

“Fuck, shit, harder, God, harder. Own my ass, I can take it, -Fuck-, don't go easy. Missed this, haven't been fucked in so long, you're so -good-, so good at this. Were you always like this with me? Hope so, hope you always used me like this, -shit-, don't slow down, don't you dare, you fucking TAKE me, treat me like your dirty little slut!”

(It's like Tony never even left. It doesn't even hurt.)

When Steve's done, and Tony's hole is a sopping mess, Bruce is hard again, and takes his place. Slips in easily and sets a lazy pace, chuckles when Tony demands more and spanks his ass when Tony tries to take control. Steve spills his second load over Tony's chest, his third over his abdomen, and Tony's blissed out and hazy by the time he puts that sinful mouth to good use.

(He hears Tony's voice in his mind, shit-eating grin, “Hey, Cap, I serve America in my own way. Every day, sometimes even more than once. Can't tell me I'm not patriotic.”)

He helps Tony upstairs to their bed, tucks him in the very middle of it, and Bruce curls around him. Kisses him till he's asleep, doesn't let him go.

(They can never let him go again.)

~::~

Rogers is in the entertainment room, Thor on one chair and Clint and Natasha on the loveseat while he inhabits an entire leather couch. He doesn't seem to mind, though he certainly isn't happy.

He hasn't looked happy the entire time Steve has known him, and it confuses him that he can be so different, so callous, so -not in love- with the amazing people he works and lives with.

Clint and Natasha look up when he comes in, study him with sharp eyes.

(They know. They know what he did with Tony. -To- Tony. There's no hiding it.)

Clint stands up – Steve thinks he's going to hit him, going to be angry at him for taking advantage of Tony – and walks right past Steve with a Time-For-Sex smirk on his face.

(It's his turn to take Tony, just like he and Bruce have.) Clint takes Thor with him, tells him he'll explain on the way, but there's someplace they have to be. Right now. It'll be a lot more fun than sticking with downer Rogers.

(Rogers looks exceptionally displeased at being called a downer by someone he considers inferior to himself.)

(He takes it out on Steve.)

“Your subordinates don't know respect, Captain,” he says. It's his favorite thing to call Steve, since he's a Major. “What kind of operation are you running here?”

Steve smiles (naturally). “A family one.”

(Nothing can bring him down. He has Tony back. They have Tony back.)

Rogers becomes disgusted with him fairly quickly after that and turns to Natasha. “If you're anything like my Romanov, you haven't given into this hippie mindset.”

Natasha glances between him and Rogers. “We have fought harder since having each other.”

“You fight hardest when you have nothing to lose,” Rogers counters. To Steve, “If Fury saw me running my team the way you run yours, he'd put me back on ice.”

“Fury knows that we're stronger together,” Steve says.

“Apparently, that negro doesn't know much in this dimension.”

Steve winces. Reminds himself that Rogers might not have had the same etiquette classes as him.

(He most likely has, but this Rogers isn't nice. This Rogers was a mistake. Erskine had chosen wrongly. “Good becomes better. Bad becomes worse.”)

Natasha stands up. “If you'll excuse me.”

Steve knows exactly where she's going. (Tony is back. Tony is here.) He doesn't stop her.

“It looks like a good time to head to bed,” he decides, after he lets Natasha have a two-minute headstart. It's the longest he can stand the buzz beneath his skin and the awkward silence. 

Rogers gives him an irritated look. “I'd rather we keep working on a way to get me back to my dimension.”

“What about Tony?”

Rogers stares at him for a long time with a perfectly blank expression. Then, slowly, with no room to fight, “Tony will be where I want him to be.”

It's too good to be true. It's so unbelievable that Steve wants to pinch himself, scream, fall through the floor, just to see if he's asleep. And he would, but he doesn't want to chance waking up.

Rogers is going to leave Tony behind. Tony is such a liability, such a problem in his own dimension, he's going to abandon him. Here. With them. He doesn't say it, thinks that maybe Steve is too good, too naïve, to hear the implications in his voice, understand his minute expressions, but he knows.

Rogers is giving them a gift, thinking that it's garbage, and Steve almost wants to hug the man. Hug him, carry him, and throw him off the balcony, but, still. 

“Of course,” he says instead of everything that clogs up his throat, all the hope and love that chokes him. “We're working on it around the clock, but it doesn't do us much good if we don't get any sleep. You should probably get some shuteye too.”

Rogers glares at him. “When I'm ready. Goodnight, Captain.”

Steve smiles (it comes so easily now). “Goodnight, Major.”

(He doesn't even mind complimenting Rogers, doesn't care about the pleasure that lights his familiar and unfamiliar eyes at being acknowledged as the higher up of them.)

He tells JARVIS to take him straight to their room. Then he just stands in the doorway to the bedroom, watching. They had woken Tony up, his family, and they are loving him so good, just the way he deserves. And Tony is being so good for them in return. His face and goatee are smeared with Natasha's juices, his cock red and heavy in Clint's mouth, and Thor takes his body with that same vicious force he takes them all with, that they give to him, and Bruce watches, already sated, and is smiling as he runs his hands between the spaces and lines of their bodies.

They're beautiful, altogether again. 

(Tony is home.)

“Mine lover Steve!” Thor roars, delighted. He grinds against Tony's ass, presses in deep, and Tony yells against Natasha's core. “Shall you ride our Tony as you once so enjoyed?”

Steve debates it, sees how far gone Tony is, and smiles. “Sure, Thor. Just give me a moment to get ready.”

“I'll help,” Bruce offers. He stretches, all content and whole, and grabs the lube from Clint's outstretched hand.

“Thanks, Bruce.” He starts taking his clothes off. “Natasha, do you mind if Tony watches us.”

She holds up a hand, a Hold-That-Thought gesture, and then arches beautifully, breathtakingly, into Tony's mouth and gasps. She rides her orgasm out on Tony's tongue and lips before bonelessly slipping to the side, letting Tony put his hands on her breasts. She turns his head though so that he watches as Bruce spreads Steve wide, fingers and tongue, and Tony makes such an intoxicating sound when Clint moves out of the way and Thor slows down so that Steve can slip over top of him. He lines Tony up with him, kisses Tony nice and lazy, and cries (quietly) as he slides over Tony's cock. It's so familiar, so precious.

Clint and Bruce share Tony's kisses while Natasha pets his hair. He's so amazing, as he breaks apart beneath them, reduced to blubbering and sobbing, holding on with a bone-breaking grip to whatever his hands come across. His eyes look straight through them.

(Tony's back.)

“That's right, Tony,” Steve breathes, one hand on Tony's chest, framing the arc reactor (trapping the glow with his fingers, his life, protecting it, him. Tony's home.) and the other twisted behind him around Thor's shoulders, enjoying the nips and hickeys the god gives him. “You're so good, just enjoy.” Tony keens and writhes, and his nails bite into Steve's thighs. “Don't let go yet, not yet.” Tony wails. “Wait for us. We're so close, we want to let go with you.” Tony's eyes roll into the back of his head. Clint leans in for a kiss and Tony bites his bottom lip raw. Clint loves it, groans, keeps coming back for more as he palms himself. 

Bruce lays his head down on Tony's shoulder and watches Steve bounce and swivel and gorge himself on Tony, Tony, -Tony-.

(Tony is never going to leave again.)

When they're all sated and laid out, on top of and next to and against and tangled with each and one another, Steve ends up spooning Tony while Bruce presses himself into Tony's chest, and Clint is sprawled over all three of them, and Natasha lays on Thor as if he is her personal bed heater.

Steve has missed this more than words could ever tell.

“God,” Tony mumbles, hoarsely (His throat has been so well used, Tony has been so good), “What did I do to deserve this? I'm like, 100% sure that I had no regrets before I died here.”

Steve kisses the nape of his neck. “I'm glad.”

Tony sighs. “It sucks that I have to go back...”

Steve smiles when everyone else looks to him, crosses between Do-Something-To-Stop-Him and We-Must-Accept-This.

He doesn't tell Tony that he's not leaving. Mostly because he doesn't want to risk Tony fighting it. The Avengers and SHIELD don't deserve Tony on his side, but that doesn't mean he won't go back to them. Doesn't mean he won't let them and hatred kill him as he supports them and Stark Industries. Tony's too strong, too proud, too stubborn, to let them chase him off so easily from what he has built and lived for all of his life.

He tells his family with a look that they'll talk about it later. “Well, while you're here, you can always rebuild Iron Man,” he offers casually. Tony goes rigid. “We had all of your older models destroyed after you... were gone. We didn't want anyone else to have them.”

Hadn't that pissed off a few big names.

“Maybe you can even talk to Pepper – you made her CEO of Stark Industries awhile back –, come up with some new ideas. She's missed you. And so has Rhodey. He still visits.” He kisses the corner of Tony's mouth, grins at the wide-eyed disbelief on his face. “We all love you so much.”

Tony shudders. His arms around Bruce go iron-tight. “Y-yeah. I mean, sure. I can do as much as I can before I – you know – have to leave. Because I have to, you know? I have responsibilities. In my dimension. Things that I, uh, have to do.”

“Sure, Tony,” Steve agrees, just to entertain his delusions of leaving.

Bruce peers up at him over Tony's shoulder. All careful What-Are-You-Doing and What-Do-You-Know. He runs his hand through those wild, thick curls. 

(Tony is home. Tony is staying.)

(Tony is ours.)

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up this morning, thought about Steve losing Tony in some way, and then him getting Tony back. Then, as I was going to the restroom, getting breakfast, thinking it through, it evolved into including all of the Avengers."
> 
> EDIT: There is a work inspired by this one, a continuation. I swear, it's better than this story is, and is from Tony Stark's point of view. Check it out, it's wonderful! It is 'In Place' by Filigree. Thank you, Filigree! http://archiveofourown.org/works/1148053

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In Place](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148053) by [Filigree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigree/pseuds/Filigree)




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